Raven Clabough

If we allow this pattern to continue, Franklin will not only have been wise, but a prophet.

I often wonder how the United States will be remembered in textbooks and in history classes centuries, or even decades, from now. Wherein will the blame lie for the decline of a once great prosperous and free nation? Because, let’s face it, long gone are the days of a limited Constitutional republic, and in its place is a Big Brother Leviathan that has slowly stripped away our liberties and freedoms, all under the promise of security in their stead.

But how, one wonders, did such a dramatic transformation take place, almost entirely with the permission of the American people? The answer is simple: the government has sold us fear, and we have purchased it with our freedoms.

America’s Founding Fathers slaved for years over constitutional debate in order to conceive of a government wherein power is scarcely centralized. The goal was to prevent absolute power from corrupting the individuals in power by limiting the authority that is assigned to those individuals.

But government is inherently self-serving and self-perpetuating, and therefore the American republic has been under attack virtually since its construction.

And those seeking to secure more power became well aware that they would have to chip away at the strict limitations set forth in the United States Constitution by convincing the American people that the Constitution is a living, breathing document that must conform to the times. And these times, according to the powers that be, are characterized by constant threats and fear.

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William T. Hathaway

Working class literature is alive and well and living in prison. It is "well" not in the sense of being contented and happy but rather of being vital and impassioned. And it is imprisoned not just in the sense of being locked behind bars but also of being locked into poverty. Some prisons have walls of iron and stone, others walls of economics and racism. It is their efforts to escape from this second prison that get most inmates incarcerated in the first. As Mumia Abu-Jamal said, "I've been in prison my whole life."

The life-constricting pressures in both types of prisons can crush some psyches and produce diamonds of art and wisdom in others. Struggle: A Magazine of Revolutionary Proletarian Literature has been publishing the diamonds (along with some glass) since 1985. Reading it is to rediscover the power of art to give us insights and inspire us to action, an invigorating change from the vapid musings and trivial subjectivity that pass for "literary" these days. By showing us the multi-layered oppression surrounding us and the strength of the human spirit caught within that, Struggle is contributing to a culture of resistance and eventually of revolution.

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